Iranian Media Pledges $600,000 to Murder Salman Rushdie
26th February 2016
As reported by Reuters, 40 Iranian news outlets have kicked in roughly $600,000 to add to the millions of dollars already pledged to the 27-year-old bounty on Satanic Verses author Salman Rushdie’s head.
The fatwa, or religious ruling, was originally decreed by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who deemed Rushdie’s novel “blasphemous” in 1989. Though a previous reform-minded Iranian president declared the fatwa “completely finished” in 1998, Khomeini’s successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reasserted the standing death sentence on the British author in 2005.
I wonder what the reaction would be if the U.S. government put up a bounty for killing Edward Snowden, and the New York Times, Washington Post, and L.A. Times kicked in another half-mil?